Last November, Trump ordered the US military to be ready to fight Islamic militant groups in Nigeria.
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The US has attacked Islamic State (IS) militants in northwestern Nigeria.
Earlier last month, US President Donald Trump ordered the US Department of Defense to prepare for military intervention.
On Thursday, Trump announced the attack on ISIS through the social media platform Truth. Trump claims that the attack was carried out because ISIS targeted innocent Christians.
In a post on the social media platform Truth, he wrote, “Under my leadership, our country will not allow extremist Islamic terrorism to flourish.” The US military’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) has coordinated with Nigeria to carry out the attack in Sokoto state.
Nigerian Foreign Minister Yusuf Maitama Tugger has confirmed the attack. However, he said that it was not related to religion.
“This was a joint operation targeting terrorists, it has nothing to do with any particular religion,” Tugger told the British media outlet BBC.
Nigeria, where the US has intervened militarily, has been in a civil war for more than a decade. The US has accused the Nigerian government of failing to do anything about the ongoing ethnic cleansing of its Christian minority. Nigeria has denied this. Nigeria claims that the government has always prioritized maintaining religious freedom as guaranteed by the constitution.
Who is ISIS?
Once a major force in Syria and Iraq, ISIS is still active in the Middle East and some countries in Africa. Its largest presence in Africa is in Nigeria's northeastern Borno and Yobe states and the Chad Basin region (spread across Niger, Chad, Nigeria, and Cameroon).
Before ISIS, the Boko Haram insurgency was active in northern Nigeria in the 2000s. This militant Islamic group called for a boycott of Western education and the abolition of the secular constitution.
The group escalated its violence after the killing of Boko Haram leader Mohammed Yusuf in 2009. By 2015, the group was fragmenting. At the same time, a faction allied with the Islamic State (IS)
. Since then, the group has been active in violence under the name Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP).
The group is estimated to have between 4,000 and 12,000 fighters. In 2025, the group carried out dozens of attacks in Nigeria and neighboring countries.
